How the weak win wars

This is an odd book, but
interesting nevertheless. It seems that political science
departments have been infected with a mania for quantifying
things that can't be quantified, causing Professor Arreguin-Toft to
attempt an exact measurement of all the 'small wars' of the
past two centuries. They run from Peru rising against Spain in 1809
to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. His attempts
to manipulate this data are sometimes laughable, as when he
solemnly assures us (in a footnote on page 109) that when Italy
invaded Ethiopia in 1935, 'the halved
ratio of relative material power comes to 24.21 to 1 in favor of
Italy'. Not twenty-four to one, and
not twenty-five to one. but 24.21:1. Put that in your spreadsheet
and smoke it!

Another odd thing: the good professor
or his editor doesn't seem to know that Asians put the family
name first. As a result, Chairman Mao gets referenced in a
footnote as 'Tse-tung, 1961'. And the military
philosopher Sun-tzu (meaning Master Sun) appears in the index as
Tzu, Sun, which is like alphabetizing our present author
as Professor, Arreguin-Toft.

That apart, I enjoyed the book. It's
based on five case studies: Russia's first rape of Chechnya,
1830-1859; the Boer War, 1899-1902; Italy in Ethiopia, 1935-1940;
the Vietnam War, 1965-1973; and Russia's misadventure in
Afghanistan, 1979-1989. And there's our first lesson about
insurgencies: they tend to last a very
long time, with the median of these
five being our eight-year slog in Vietnam. That's two presidential
terms--far too long for most American appetites. (It's notable
that the two longest conflicts were both pursued by a
totalitarian government in Moscow.)

Incidentally, as the sub-title
suggests and as is reinforced frequently in the text,
Arreguin-Toft has the very devil of a time trying to define the
wars he's writing about. He is not alone in this. Today I got in
the mail a monograph from the US Army's Strategic Studies
Institute, which speaks of 'insurgencies
and other unconventional asymmetric irregular wars'!

'Indirect defense strategies
[terrorism, guerrilla war, passive resistance] presuppose a
certain level of restraint on behalf of attackers. When strong
actors employ a strategy that ignores such restraint [strategic
bombing, torture, assassination], weak actors are unlikely to
win, both because there would be no one left to win for, and GWS
[guerrilla warfare strategy] depends directly on a network of
social support for intelligence, logistical support, and
replacements.' (For example, Ghandi if he'd tried 'passive resistance'
against Nazi Germany instead of Britain.) 'Barbarism works as a COIN
strategy because by attacking either or both of the essential
elements of a GWS – sanctuary and social support – it
destroys an adversary's capacity to fight.' (p.41)

The emperor Haile Selasse, speaking
to his army on the eve of battle in 1935: 'Soldiers, I give you this advice, so that we may
gain the victory over the enemy. Be cunning, be savage, face the
enemy one by one, two by two, five by five in the fields and
mountains.
'Do not take white clothes, do not congregate as you've done
now. Hide, strike suddenly, fight the nomad war, snipe and kill
singly. Today the war has begun, therefore scatter and advance to
ictory.' (p.121) Alas, the Ethiopians
were too proud: they fought in the open and wore white garments
instead of camouflage, and they were defeated.

More than any academic I have read,
Arreguin-Toft is honest about who was the aggressor in South
Vietnam: 'By 1959 the DRV [North Vietnam] had shifted emphasis
from political agitation to preparation for war. It sent 4000
troops to the South and began formal construction of ... the Ho
Chi Minh Trail.... It also began smuggling arms to the South by
sea. In 1960, the DRV established the National Liberation Front
to coordinate the war in the South.' This would come as a
considerable surprise to such liberal propagandists as Frances
Fitzgerald. 'By 1961, Viet Cong (VC) forces had begun escalating
attacks against Diem's government in the South. Assassinations of
village leaders and provincial officials had risen from 1200 a
year in 1959 to 4000.... In 1963 the DRV and VC began more
aggressive and larger-scale actions against South Vietnam.'
(pp.148-49)

Of the various hypotheses he tests
against his five case studies, Arreguin-Toft likes the direct –
indirect strategy notion the best. The stronger side wins when it uses
the same sort of strategy as the weaker side (most obviously, the
Italian army against Ethiopian warriors in battle array). The
weaker side wins when the strategic principle is opposite (the
Viet Cong and North Vietnamese when they used guerrilla tactics
against General Westmorelands 'search and destroy' sweeps):

'weak actors ... win wars against
much stronger adversaries when they are able to adopt and maintain
an ideal counterstrategy. Strategy, in other words, can multiply
or divide applied power.
Strong actors come to a fight with a complex combination of
interests, forces, doctrine, military technology, and political
objectives, but because armed forces are thought to be versatile
in their employment, and because strong actors are only
relatively, and not absolutely, strong, strong actors do have
choices in the strategies they use.' (p.200)

'similar approaches ... imply defeat
for the weak actor and victory for the strong. These wars will be
over quickly, making political vulnerability ... irrelevant. By
contrast, opposite approaches ... favor weak actors at the
expense of strong actors. They will drag on, forcing strong
actors – especially democratic strong actors – to
make tough and costly decisions in order to continue with any
prospect of success.' (pp.203-4) In other words, barbarism vs.
guerrilla war as in Chechnya, or conventional war against a
conventional defense as in Ethiopia, favors the strong. A
conventional war against a guerrilla defense, as in Vietnam,
favors the weak.

'In same-approach interactions the
strong actor wins because there is nothing to deflect or mediate
the use of its material advantages in resources, including
soldiers and and wealth. In opposite-approach interactions, the
strong actor's resources are deflected (weak actors attempt to
avoid open confrontation...) or directed at values which don't
necessarily affect the capacity of the weak actor to continue to
impose costs on the strong actor (e.g. capturing cities and
towns). (p.204)

'If weak actors choose a conventional
defense strategy, strong actors can lose if they attempt to use
strategic air power (indirect-approach) to win. The costs in
terms of time and collateral damage which inevitably follows such
attacks provoke outrage internationally, and often domestically
as well. Either sort of outrage can create pressure to cease
hostilities short of achieving a strong actors political goals.
If weak actors choose an indirect defense strategy, strong actors
can lose if they attempt a conventional attack strategy
(direct-approach) to win. GWS is specifically designed to trade
time for territory, so unless strong actors are willing to commit
millions of troops for decades, they are unlikely to win against
an adversary that avoids contact and strikes when and where least
expected.' (p.221)